Flags of the 12th Virginia Infantry ("Petersburg Regiment"), Part 5: The 12th's Last Battle Flag

The Last Battle Flag of the 12th Virginia Infantry

Caption:  Stainback Flag Fragment.  The inscription reads:  This Remnant of 12th Va Infantry flag, was brought from Appomattox by a Corporal of the colorguard in his she.  The colorbearer divided the flag to keep the enemy from getting it.  The 12th never lost a flag, but lost 4 colorbearers that carried it.  

                                                                                    “(Requiescat in pace)”

Credit:  Francis Charles Stainback Collection, Virginia Military Institute Museum, Virginia Military Institute.

Caption:  Phillips Flag Fragment.  The inscription reads:  “This portion of a star is the center of star from the Battle Flag of the 12th Va Infantry, which I with my own hands tore it up at Appomattox when we surrendered on the 9th of April 1865.  I divided it out to those who wished a portion of it.  I have cut off four of the points from time to time one piece to D. M. Dunlop, one to Leroy S. Edwards & others.  I also have my sword which I had on and the dirt has never been wiped off since I returned.

“J. E. Phillips, Capt Richmond Grays”

Credit:  Elise Phillips Atkins, Arlington Heights, Ill.

Presentation

Shortly after the beginning of March 1864 a new battle flag arrived at the 12th Virginia’s camp, 

replacing the Petersburg Regiment’s old rag and reminding the troops that fighting would soon 

resume.[i]

The Wilderness

On May 6, 1864, the regiment charged in the forefront of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s flank attack at the battle of the Wilderness.  A minnie nicked the ankle of Sgt. William Crawford Smith, the 12th’s color bearer.  Ensign Benjamin Harrison May, a younger brother of the late Major May, took the battle flag.  “A splendid fellow he was, as brave as a lion and as gentle as a woman,” remembered Private George S. Bernard.[ii]  May had just obtained his medical degree in Philadelphia when the war began, but he enlisted as a private in the Petersburg City Guard and served with his four brothers.  After Second Manassas killed brother John, mortally wounded brother George and crippled brother James, Brig. Gen. William Mahone detailed Ben as assistant surgeon of the 12th to keep him out of harm’s way.  But as the 1864 campaign’s opening approached, Ben begged Mahone for permission to carry the regiment’s colors.  Mahone assented.  Ben became the 12th’s ensign on April 17.

Now May floundered knee deep through a swamp toward the plank road.  Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Moxley Sorrel, who led the charge, spotted May.  “He was doing all that man could do with his colors, but seemed to be somewhat embarrassed by the bushes, and I thought perhaps I might help him to get them forward, mounted as I was,” Sorrel remembered.  He rode up and asked for the colors, which May refused to yield.

“We will follow you,” May told Sorrel.[iii]

Soon afterward part of the regiment crossed Orange Plank Road.  Falling back, this part of the 12th provoked friendly fire from the rest of its brigade that wounded Longstreet. 

Most of the bullets had flown around the flags, the best targets.   The regiment’s three soldiers struck by the volley included two of the color guard.  Color Cpl. John Mingea, who had returned from Tennessee with his friend Sergeant Smith to fight for Virginia, died instantly.  First Sergeant Benjamin B. White, another member of the color guard, took a bullet “on the side of the head and a portion of his brain ran out,” recalled Phillips, now a first lieutenant. “We left him on the ground going around & around on his elbow not knowing what he was doing.”[iv] Instead of diving for cover May made himself even more conspicuous.  “Ben May stood upon a stump, with his lithe, graceful form, a smile upon his face, waving our battle-flag until it was recognized,” recalled Sgt. William Watson Tayleure.[v]  

The shoeless Sergeant White staggered into the 12th’s bivouac next morning.  Lieutenant Phillips carried him to an ambulance corps man, who brought White to the regiment’s infirmary.  There White died.

Spotsylvania

On May 12, the regiment participated in a savage melee at Heth’s Salient, east of the Bloody Angle.  Ben May held the 12th's flag in one hand.  With his other he blazed away with his revolver.  A Federal plugged him from less than ten feet away.  The colors fell to the Richmond Grays’ Cpl. William Carrington Mayo.  A graduate of Yale fluent in a dozen languages, this engineer had returned from France on a blockade runner in early 1863 and immediately enlisted, refusing an officer’s commissioner.  Mayo’s hold on the banner lasted just seconds.  A Yankee drilled him in the chest.  The New Grays’ Pvt. Allen Washington Magee seized the flag.

Soon after the melee, the remnant of the 12th’s color guard stood near a dogwood.  A shell burst among these soldiers.  Two died instantly.  Private Magee, wounded in the left forearm, dropped the flag.  Lieutenant Phillips ran around the dogwood and picked up the colors.  Nearby Sergeant Smith, the lone member of the color guard still on his feet, had recovered from his wound of six days earlier.  Phillips gave the flag to Smith, who got through the fight unscathed despite the hail of lead that the colors drew.

May succumbed to his wound four days later.  Before he died, he sent a message to Sorrel about their encounter in the Wilderness:  “Tell Colonel Sorrel I could not part with the colors, but we followed him.”[vi]

The Crater

  The 12th’s new battle flag had flown untouched before the savage battle of the Crater on July 31, 1864.  During the regiment’s charge to retake earthworks north of the Crater, five balls pierced the battle flag’s bunting.  Three more struck its staff.  Within a minute of when Sergeant Smith planted the staff on the works, a ball from the Northerners knocked it down.  Smith stuck it back on the works.  The enemy shot the flag down again.  Yet again it went up.  Yet again it went down—this time with a shattered staff.  Smith bound its pieces together by lashing them to a ramrod.  Once more the banner went up.  Union minnies riddled its bunting.  After the battle, Sergeant Smith examined the colors.  Seventy-five bullets had passed through the flag.  Nine had struck the staff.  Mahone, now the division commander, sent for Smith and presented him with the staff of one of the Federal colors the 12th’s brigade had captured at the Crater.  Smith cut down the staff, then transferred to it the Petersburg Regiment’s bullet-torn old rag.

Globe Tavern

At the battle of Globe Tavern, the 12th and the rest of its brigade found themselves nearly surrounded.  A soldier who stood between the brigadier and Sergeant Smith was pointing to a sword leaning against a tree and inquiring about the blade’s ownership when a bullet hit him in the face, killing him instantly.  For at least twelve feet on each side of the regiment’s banner, every man of the color guard fell killed or wounded except Smith and one other.  The 12th’s men stripped their colors from the staff and hid them in a haversack to save them from capture.

Appomattox

At Appomattox on April 9, 1865, rather than surrender the 12th's old rag, Lieutenant Phillips and Sergeant Smith tore up that bullet-riddled banner.  Taking a star and a part of the red and white colors for his own, Phillips distributed the rest to anyone else who wished a scrap.  Corporal Francis Charles Stainback walked home with the portion of the flag reading “12th. Va.” in his shoe.  After Phillips returned home, he shared four of his star’s five points with comrades.

Federal sources mistakenly claimed that on April 6, 1865, at Sailor’s Creek, two Federal cavalrymen of Custer’s division captured flags that belonged to the 12th Virginia Infantry.   Custer/s troops charged “the enemy’s wagon train” and captured 300 wagons and much of Ewell’s command.[vii]  The flags that Custer’s men allegedly captured from the 12th bore neither unit designation nor battle honors.  On June 4, 1892, before any controversy regarding the regiment’s banner had arisen, Lieutenant Phillips wrote:  “The Flag we had at Appomattox was not surrendered but cut up in places….”[viii] 

In 1905, the United States government returned to Virginia flags that now hang in the American Civil War Museum (formerly the Museum of the Confederacy) in Richmond, Virginia.  Their misidentification of two as banners of the Petersburg Regiment touched off a flurry of letters from the regiment’s veterans.  “The 12th Virginia infantry flag was not surrendered,” wrote Phillips after explaining that the 12th had not become engaged at Sailor’s Creek.  “I with my own hands tore it to pieces….”[ix]  He stated that he still had the star he had taken for himself.  Phillips’ granddaughter had it in her possession when I photographed it years ago in Arlington Heights, Illinois.  Attached to it is Phillips’ inscription, which states that the star is “from the Battle Flag of the 12th Va Infantry, which I with my own hands tore it up at Appomattox when we surrendered on the 9th of April 1865….”[x]  The 12th’s Pvt. James Cook Birdsong corroborated Phillips, writing, “The regimental flag…was not surrendered,” and also insisting that the 12th did not fight at Sailor’s Creek.  “When the regiment stacked arms after surrender, the flag was cut up by the boys….”[xi]

Conclusive evidence came from Cpl. Francis C. Stainback—the portion of the flag that reads “12th. Va.”  It rests in the Museum of Virginia Military Institute. Stainback's inscription, which accompanies the fragment, states that he brought it away from Appomattox in his shoe, that the flag was divided to keep the enemy from getting it, and that the 12th never lost a flag.[xii]

[i] George S. Bernard, War Talks of Confederate Veterans (Petersburg: Fenn & Owen, 1892), 184.

[ii] Ibid., 91.

[iii] Ibid., 88, 90.

[iv] James Eldred Phillips, “Sixth Corporal,” James Eldred Phillips Papers, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia.

[v] Bernard, War Talks, 94n.

[vi] Ibid., 106.

[vii] OR Series 1, 46:1, 591-592, 1132, 1136, 1258-1259.

[viii] Letter, James E. Phillips to George S. Bernard, June 4, 1892, Bernard Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

[ix] “Capt. Jim Has A Star From Flag:  Tore Up Twelfth Virginia Colors to Prevent Their Surrender at Appomattox,” unidentified newspaper clipping, n.d., James Eldred Phillips Papers, Private Collection of Elise Phillips Atkins, Arlington Heights, Illinois.

[x] Star Fragment, Phillips Papers, Private Collection of Elise Phillips Atkins.

[xi] James C. Birdsong, “Error As To Flags Of 12th Virginia:  That Regiment Fought Its Last Battle Near Farmville, Not at Sailor’s Creek,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 31, 1907.

[xii] Francis Charles Stainback Collection, Virginia Military Institute Museum, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia.